Daily News from New York, New York • 7

Wednesday, July 20, 1988 DAILY NEWS 7 i r-i i 0 City outlook still glum Using the old estimate that 400,000 city residents are infected, the state controller's office estimated the city's AIDS caseload would be 120,000 by 1992. That would require $740 million in city spending in 1992, or twice the current projection. "Unless the city acts to prepare for the impending crisis, its entire health-care system could be thrown into disarray," Regan said. Joseph criticized Regan's report as "based on very poor science and a worst-case scenario piled upon a worst-case scenario with a bit of inappropriate hypothesizing thrown in," By EDWARD EDELSON and JOEL SIEGEL Daily News Staff Writers The city Health Department cut by half yesterday its estimate of the number of people infected with the AIDS virus, but said it was sticking to projections that 43,000 New Yorkers will come down with the disease by 1991. The new estimate on those infected 200,000 instead of 400,000 was announced as State Controller Edward Regan said the city was jeopardizing its health-care system by not adequately planning for the AIDS crisis.

City Health Commissioner bleak long-term outlook." "No one wants to believe these numbers more than we do," said Richard Dunn, executive director of the Gay Men's Health Crisis. "However, the Koch administration's record on downplaying the epidemic, and the hasty release of this report, would lead anyone to be skeptical." The Health Department still believes that 43,000 New Yorkers will come down with the disease by the end of 1991, Joseph said. Stephen Joseph said the new infection estimate was based on a revision in the number of infected homosexual men. The department reduced its estimate of the number of gay men carrying the AIDS virus to 50,000, based on new estimates from San Francisco on the number of men who have contracted AIDS. Previously, New York City had estimated that as many as 250,000 gay men were infected.

The number of intravenous drug users estimated to have the AIDS virus remains at 100,000. An additional 50,000 included women infected by men, and babies infected by their mothers. "We hope in the long run that there is some good news," Joseph said. "Over the long haul that means less people who are going to be sick and less people who are going to die." But Joseph cautioned that the revised estimate "does not necessarily mean a less- i i IllllilllH .4 into. By DON GENTILE JACK NMTM DMLV NFWS SHE SHALL NOT BE MOVED: Diana Hunt in bed in her apartment in the Hotel Royalton.

MolMif Mice tM dame Daily News Staff Writer An illegal Harlem nursing home where 43 elderly residents were crammed into squalid rooms that swarmed with flies was shut yesterday by health officials. The residents were taken to hospitals and health-care facilities. "It was one of the sleaziest nursing homes we've seen," said state Health Department spokesman Peter Slocum in describing the Unit Conservatory, two adjacent four-story buildings on Madison Ave. at 129th St. On a tour of the home, the residentsnearly all over 65 were found crowded five to a room.

One blind man lay uncared for in a bed surrounded by swarms of flies. Another slept in a tiny passageway that connected the buildings. Despite the squalor, owner Benjamin Cray, 52, said he, his wife, Lucille, and six employes provided meals for the tenants, bathed them, gave them medication and took them on doctors' visits. Cray described the Unit Conservatory as a boarding house and not a nursing home. "It's an unlicensed health facility," where people are not getting health care, said Florence Freucher, state Health Department area administrator.

Two of the" residents one suffering from heart disease, the other from bed sores were removed Monday to Harlem Hospital, Freucher said. The remainder were removed yesterday Cray bought both buildings in 1979 for $51,000. He charges residents from $400 to $800 a month. The rent is paid from the Social Security checks of his tenants who, Cray said, sign over authorization to cash the checks to his wife. "It costs about $6,000 a month to run the place," said Cray.

Freucher noted Cray was taking in close to $30,000 a month, leaving IANA HUNT, an invalid and the last guest at the Hotel Royalton, remained in bed again yesterday, as she has liams, Cicely Tyson and Paul Roeb-ling. But oh, if Hunt's friends could see her now. She lives today, as she has for the last 24 years, in a penthouse apartment on W. 44th St. The 14 story Hotel done each day for almost four years now.

A tiny air conditioner pushed foul air through her room. A power Way and stars did not soil their fame with cocaine or buddy up to nightclub owners who squirreled away thousands of dollars in false ceilings. You know, a time before Studio 54, the pernicious playpen of Steve Ru-bell and lan Schrager, part owners of the Royalton. It is their intention to make the hotel the Algonquin of the '90s when they open the place in a month to the literary set. As Hunt has not done anything on Broadway for a long time, fche is not their kind of tenant.

Once Rubell and Schrager were big guys in this town, their Studio 54 a shining example of all that is On any given night you could sec America's greatest stars coked up to the gills. Thing's were going great too until police found all that money hidden in the ceiling. The feds came in with MIKE WC ALARY saw buzzed in the distance. "You'll have to speak up," Hunt said to a visitor. "This is a tough room to work." Once Hunt was the terror of Broadway, a theatrical agent who rushed to and fro making stars of kids with honey voices and drop-dead good looks.

Hunt, now in her 60s, was what you call a theater brat tit- ft -y Ai, fern t- Royalton was once considered the poor man's Algonquin, and Hunt's own room belonged to America's greatest theater critic, George Jean She tap-danced alongside her friend Beverly Sills and shared too much whisky with the naughty Tennessee Williams. She revived the career of the great Myron McCormick with Nathan. if Iff! arid put together Hunt comes from irmu ffj Vj him with jTWwfit Wr i V' i i')iil: I rr4 Billy -Tkitv WiU -Bpo4d See AUA-LAitY Pstf 12.